


It's Just the Start

by kay_emm_gee



Series: the kids aren't alright (The 100 tumblr prompts) [73]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Best Friends, F/M, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-02
Updated: 2016-01-02
Packaged: 2018-05-11 00:36:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5607016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been so long since he had seen Clarke in something other than leggings and her father’s old, baggy college sweatshirt with its paint-stained letters and frayed sleeve hems. He couldn’t blame her for holing up in her apartment, though, not with her show, her first show, coming up. Tonight, though, with her paintings finally submitted and her time her own again, she walked into the bar wearing jeans, heels, and sequins under a leather jacket with an ecstatic smile that had Bellamy choking on his beer. </p>
<p>Sometimes he forgot he was in love with his best friend, but on nights like tonight, it was hard to remember if there was a time he had ever felt less for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Just the Start

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Do you take bellarke fic requests? If so, one based off of 'Avalanche' by walk the moon, and one by either 'new York' by Ed Sheeran or from Grease? thank ya
> 
> { I went with New York by Ed Sheeran. }

It had been so long since he had seen Clarke in something other than leggings and her father’s old, baggy college sweatshirt with its paint-stained letters and frayed sleeve hems. He couldn’t blame her for holing up in her apartment, though, not with her show, her _first_  show, coming up. Tonight, though, with her paintings finally submitted and her time her own again, she walked into the bar wearing jeans, heels, and sequins under a leather jacket with an ecstatic smile that had Bellamy choking on his beer. 

Sometimes he forgot he was in love with his best friend, but on nights like tonight, it was hard to remember if there was a time he had ever felt less for her.

“Here’s my favorite New York-famous artist!” Octavia crowed, hopping down from her seat to give Clarke a hug, with Miller and Monty following close behind. 

She beamed at all of them. “Not famous quite yet. It’s only my first show, and it still doesn’t feel real.”

“It won’t for a while,” Lincoln said with a knowing smile. 

“Does it ever?” She asked breathlessly as she slid in between him and Bellamy, He reached down to give her hand a squeeze, which she returned immediately, as Lincoln chuckled and shook his head.

“Hasn’t for me.” 

“Good to know.”

“Next round is on me,” Monty interrupted, gesturing to their waiter.

They all groaned, because they knew what was coming: shots. Still, when the little glasses with the unidentifiable liquid arrived, they all knocked them back with a mix of grins and grimaces. 

Those weren’t the only shots that came to their table, though Bellamy refused the last few, wanting his memory to be clear. Clarke shone so brightly tonight–laughter loud and uninhibited, words spilling from her crimson lips joyfully–that he wanted to preserve this snapshot of her without a drunken film getting in the way. It was so different than the snippets he had of her the past year: worried, nervous, self-doubting, angry, regretful. Her decision to leave medical school for working part-time coffee shop and retail jobs while she tried to make it in the art world hadn’t been an easy one–for her, or for her mother. There had been tears and yelling and so many _maybe I made a mistake’s,_ and Bellamy had been there for every single one of them. He had also been there when she screeched at her phone, nearly dropping it when she had gotten the call from this little gallery in Brooklyn who had wanted to display her art. So he wanted to remember tonight, Clarke radiant and triumphant, on the verge of the success she had sacrificed so much for.

He was in love with her, and she was so busy running from her past, running to a bright new future, that he wasn’t sure if she would ever see it. He didn’t care though, because he was patient, and she was happy. He couldn’t ask for more.

“You’re smiling more than me tonight,” she said hours later as she plopped down into the seat next to him, cheeks flushed from the gin and the dancing.

“Happy for you,” Bellamy replied, bracing his hands on his knees so he didn’t brush her tousled hair back into place instead.

“If you’re so happy, then come dance with me.”

She cocked an eyebrow, and he did the same in return. After a beat of standoff, Clarke laughed, a rough, throaty sound, clasping her hands around his wrists as she tugged him out of his seat. 

He followed her onto the dance floor, followed her back to the table, followed her outside the bar after last call, waving to Miller as he tried to wrangle a very drunk, very affectionate Monty into a cab. Octavia and Lincoln disappeared in a blink as well, and before Bellamy knew it, he was standing on the sidewalk with a humming Clarke. She stood with her face up and eyes closed, arms held away from her body, a soft smile on her face.

When his hand came to rest on her lower back, a question of what came next, she sighed happily. “I wanna walk for a bit.”

As Bellamy stepped forward, she stepped along, right into his side so that his arm automatically came up to curve around her shoulders. They walked without purpose or destination, wandering among the windswept streets and under the neon city lights. The flash of headlights would reflect on the sequins of Clarke’s shirt, catching Bellamy’s eyes. He didn’t dare look down, though, because the flush he felt on his cheeks would give him away if she saw. 

“Hey,” Clarke said when they came to the edge of a nameless small park lined by an iron fence and overgrown bushes.

Her hand slipping into his and tugging made him stop and turn. “Hey what?”

With a wry smile, she leaned forward, cocking her head to the side as she looked up at him, blue eyes and gold hair and everything he ever wanted.

“Hey,” Clarke murmured again, and then her lips were on his, a little warm, a little dry, half-certain and half-curious.

His one hand tightened on hers as the other came up to cup her face, to keep her close to him, closer than he had ever dared to have her. 

“Hey,” he said roughly when she pulled a way with a quiet giggle. “What took you so long?”

She groaned as she knocked her head against his chest. “Don’t be an ass. Or a hypocrite.”

His pulse jumped– _she knew?_  “What?”

“Raven said you’ve been stupid in love with me for a while.” She tensed, then cleared her throat nervously. “Her words, not mine.”

“She’s not wrong.”

The words came out quicker than he could think, but the embarrassed fear that washed through him faded away when her head jerked up even more quickly, wonder in her eyes.

“Oh,” she breathed.

“I waited because..”

“Because?”

He choked out a chuckle as she leaned closer, forgetting all of his reasons. He had no good reasons now that he knew the feel of her body pressed against his, the taste of her lips, the rhythm of her breath hitching when his thumb stroked over her cheek. 

“I’ve got nothing,” he admitted, and she laughed, bright and clear. “Why were you waiting?”

“At first I didn’t know, or I didn’t want to know, because well, my life was kind of a mess,” she said glancing down at their intertwined hands. He chucked her chin encouragingly, and she slowly drew her gaze back to his. “I wanted to wait until I was…enough.”

“Clarke,” he murmured, leaning down. “You’ve always been _more_  than enough for me.”

His mouth landed on hers as she sucked in a gasp. When his hands came to rest heavily on her hips, slipping under her jacket against her thin shirt, Clarke shivered and pressed closer to his heat, the crisp fall breeze tossing her hair against his cheek as trucks honked and cabs whooshed by on the street next to them. 

Bellamy continued kissing her under the streetlight, in the middle of a city that had made her cry and made her smile, that had made him wait and made him happy that he had. In a leather jacket and with paint-stained hands, Clarke kissed him back, running her tongue against the seal of his smiling lips, tasting like more than just a fresh start.


End file.
